#Team BDNA

[the-noodle-king]

Here’s another art dump post! 

First up is Vampire Emma/Illusionist from the Overwatch Skintober challenge I never finished. Vampire was day 9 but it was actually the first one I drew because I was really vibin’ with it. I was gonna wait till I had done all the day before it to post it, but then I stopped at day 5, and came back to finish day 6 a month and a half later, so, obviously that never happened XD

Then we have a dramatic lighting test I made using one of the drawings of Reggie I did x amount of time ago. I was planning on posting it as a standalone thing, but never got around to it, so, here it is now.

3rd up is Rascorch, a fakemon I had a go at designing. I really really like it and will not be taking criticism!

4th is one of my RWBY OC teams, team BDNA (Belladonna). Like with the RWBY team I did post, CRSS (Cress), I redesigned these gals, but I ended up not liking 2 and 4, so I didn’t post them. left to right is: Blair Blackhart, Drucilla Green-Gale, Nyx Rosewood, and Apple Granger. Blair is a con-artist based on the Blair Witch (her magic is all tricks and slight of hand, more like a magician, but passing herself off as a witch), Dru is based on the Wicked Witch of Oz, Nyx is based on the concept of the modern witch (crystals, self-made rune circles) and Apple is based on the classical evil sorceress seen in fairtales (see the evil queen from snow white, maleficent and mother gothel for specific stylistic influences).

And the finally a bunch of rune circles which I started making every so often after I redesigned Nyx, because they’re really fun to make.

[martechadvisor-blog]

BloomReach Appoints David Hurwitz as CMO and Dave Pomeroy as CFO

Mountain View, CA: BloomReach, Inc., the Digital Experience Platform company, announced today that it has expanded its executive team with David Hurwitz as Chief Marketing Officer and Dave Pomeroy as Chief Financial Officer. These seasoned executives will help the company scale-up to its ambitious global growth targets, Hurwitz by leading BloomReach's marketing and sales development initiatives, Pomeroy by scaling the company’s business operations, including finance, legal, people operations, and facilities.

Raj De Datta, CEO & Co-founder, commented: “I’m super excited that two supremely capable executives have joined our team. First, a world-class CMO is the hardest executive search in Silicon Valley, but we found one in David Hurwitz. He’s been an entrepreneur, a startup marketing leader, a large company leader and the marketing leader of growth companies. We as an exec team are excited about the energy, insight, and intelligence that David brings us.”

De Datta continued “Of similar importance is finding not just an extremely capable CFO, but a growth CFO, which we’ve found in Dave Pomeroy. He’s highly esteemed, having succeeded in large and rapidly-growing public companies, including Apple and Microsoft, and in startups.”

“BloomReach is a perfect fit for me in terms of scale, need and culture,” said Hurwitz. “From North America to Europe, hundreds of enterprises are basing their digital experience initiatives on our software. Working with the very capable and very likable crew at BloomReach, we’re going to dramatically raise the profile of that Experience Economy success, and extend it to legions of new BloomReachers.”

"I'm thrilled to join BloomReach," said Pomeroy. "It's an amazing opportunity for me to apply my financial leadership experience in helping the team scale-up to our global growth ambitions. Given our world-class investors, market opportunity, tremendous customer base, product vision, company culture and outstanding team, I see BloomReach in such a good position that it's a real pleasure to step into this role."

The new executives join the company in a phase of increasing momentum. BloomReach was recently named a leader in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management for the second consecutive year, and the company is rapidly building out its global system integrator and technology alliances network under the supervision of recently arrived Head of Global Channels Patrick Finn. Both Hurwitz and Pomeroy will have a strategic role in further building on this momentum moving forward.

Pomeroy comes to BloomReach from BDNA, following its successful acquisition by Flexera. He has a wealth of experience in scaling up midmarket companies from his CFO roles at BDNA, Symphony Communications and Rhythm NewMedia. In addition, he has held finance leadership positions at Apple, Yahoo! and Microsoft. He began his finance career as an audit supervisor for Ernst & Young in Palo Alto. Pomeroy holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Hurwitz's Silicon Valley career began as a software engineer. Later, he created the concepts of IT Governance solutions as CMO of publicly-traded Niku Software and Lean IT as a marketing executive at CA Technologies. Niku’s great success during his tenure included being voted Best Vendor four consecutive times across two continents at Gartner Summits. Subsequently, he was SVP of Worldwide Marketing for Serena Software and CMO for Appvance.ai. Hurwitz holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[the-noodle-king]

Team SLVR, some of my first OC’s kinda ever. I originally planned on doing proper drawings of them but I haven’t been back to doing those in a long while now, so I figured I’d post up their new designs and their finally designed weapons.

I’m not going to dwell on everything wrong with their original designs/drawings, because dunking on my past self’s art and design choices is not productive to growth. However I do actively enjoy thinking about character design, and there are a few big changes from the original designs to the new ones worth talking about. But I’ll keep it short.

I’m gonna put that, and then character details and stuff about their semblances and weapons under the cut.

Their original colour schemes were so messy and all over the place, ignoring the core theme of RWBY character designs; each character has a colour that represents them. Sand’s design has more red and purple in it than pale yellow, Lime’s is completely the wrong green, Violet’s is also the wrong purple, and there’s way too much of it without proper variation or dispersal throughout the design, and then Rouge’s is the only one with gold instead of Silver, their team colour. Completely ignoring all of the issues with the designs themselves, the colour language is completely off, and for something so integral to the very concept of RWBY OC’s to be so wrong, was my biggest issue with these original designs, when I finally came back to them

Hence, the colour overhaul in the new designs! I gave them all monochromatic eyes and hair, matching their personal colours. Sand has pale yellow eyes and hair, Lime has a bright acidic green, Violet a light purple, and Rouge a bright red, and then these same colours are pulled down throughout their designs, head to toe, and then broken up by a couple shades each of creams through dark greys and black, and finally they all have silver accents. Sand is the leader, and he’s meant to be a lighthearted and approachable character, so he has a bulk of lighter colour on his top half, with his personal colour covering what would otherwise be a large amount of black on his boots. Lime is practical, pragmatic, straightforward; she wears more armour, but also more of her personal colour is on show. Violet is outwardly timid, but also very powerful, her clothes are baggy and her colour seems to box her in and drown her out somewhat. And Rouge is a rogue, he’s sneaky and works in the shadows, so his personal colour takes a backseat to the bulk of black in his outfit.

And now for actually character stuff rather than just design rambling ^_^;;

Team SLVR (Silver) is based on mythical beasts/monsters of legend, and alongside team BDNA (Belladonna), who were based on various famous/archetypal witches, they were intended to be rivals for Team CRSS (Cress), to form a narrative of the fairy tale heroes against witches and monsters; with the obvious caveat of the witches and monsters being people with human feelings and motivations, and ultimately having more in common with each other than against. 

Sand Martichoras:  Sand is based on the Manticore, and his Semblance ‘Venom Lash’ presents itself as his Aura manifesting a large, spectral scorpion tail from his lower back; Venom Lash can be used to strike with the tail itself in order to poison a foe and drain them of their strength, or Sand can channel it’s power into his attacks, imbuing his dust shells with the same poisoning quality. His weapon, The Scorpion Stinger, is a weighty spear with a wide flat spearhead more appropriate for sweeping attacks than thrusts, and on the opposite end is a shotgun. It can be snapped in half to use both simultaneously, and can then be used like nunchucks or even as a grappling hook with the cable connecting them. Sand is the leader of Team SLVR, he’s confident but lighthearted and easy to talk to. Some would say he’s overconfident, or even vain, but for the most part he gets along with everyone he meets.

Lime Gorgana:  Lime is based on the Basilisk, as well as Medusa, and her Semblance ‘Eye of the Gorgon’ presents itself as a pulsating green glow all about her, and her Aura manifesting several hissing snakes all around her head; Eye of the Gorgon is a powerful semblance which Lime struggles to control, it being able to activate without her meaning to when she becomes overly emotional. Eye of the Gorgon petrifies Dust, rendering it inert stone; when it is directed, it can petrify a controlled amount up to quite a great distance away, so long as Lime can see the container the Dust is in or the person carrying it. However it also petrifies Dust immediately around Lime as well, in a very small area while it is being carefully controlled and directed, but in a larger one when she loses control of it; regardless it means she cannot use or even carry any Dust of her own. Her weapon, The Serpentine Fang, is a simple one, owing to it’s inability to use Dust; it’s base form is a lithe, collapsible rapier which pairs elegantly with her arm-mounted shield, then it’s scabbard doubles as either a large, weighty cleaver, or when the rapier is inserted, as a substantial greatsword. To compensate for her inability to use Dust of any kind, Lime has trained her body to be a powerful and adaptive weapon all it’s own, equally skilled in the use of her shield, hand to hand combat, the rapid, flowing motions of combat with her rapier, and the devastating, crushing blows of her greatsword. Lime is the second in command of Team SLVR; her and Sand often disagree about many things, but they also trust each other explicitly. She is very levelheaded, and very pragmatic and practical, some would even call her cold blooded for some of the decisions she’s made in the heat of combat, but her skill with strategy is unquestionable .

Violet Wolfsbane:  Violet is based on the Werewolf, and her Semblance ‘Lunar Frenzy’ manifests as her Aura expanding to project the shape of a spectral, bipedal wolf about her. While her Semblance is active Violet loses control, going into a frenzy, her expanded Aura protects her from a greater range of attacks and it hardens itself against damage, allowing her to fight for much longer than otherwise; it also gives her enhanced speed and strength, allowing her to leap and bound across great distances and rend through strong defences. However it comes at a great toll, draining her strength and expending her Aura, meaning that once it runs out, she collapses, often unable to even remain conscious, making it’s use in actual battle extremely high risk. Her weapons are The Violent Renders, manacle-like wrist bracers with crescent blades on their sides which can rotate and open out into tiered claws for varied uses, such as slashing, stabbing and rending. In their expanded state, the blades can also be detached from the manacles to be swung by cables at distant foes. Violet is timid despite her height, often walking hunched over or standing with all her limbs angled inwards, as if trying to make herself smaller, and she speaks with a soft voice. She is afraid of her Semblance and doesn’t like using it, but Sand, Lime and Rouge have helped to bring her somewhat out of her shell and have attempted to instil more confidence in her, especially with regards to her power.

Rouge Entigo:  Rouge is based on the Wendigo, as well as the Jackalope, and his Semblance ‘Blood Hunger’ manifests as his Aura taking on a mottled black and red effect, with spectral antlers atop his head and pitch black eyes. While Rouge is channelling Blood Hunger, he is able to cannibalise his own Aura to exponentially increase his strength, as well as to perform other feats he is not otherwise capable of; By taking large chunks of power from his Aura at a time, Rouge is able to perform short range teleportation (only to a location he can see) or he can cut a similar portion off of another persons Aura; he can also corrupt Dust to significantly weaken it’s effects, or temporarily prevent the activation of someone else’s semblance. If someone else is willing, they can feed their Aura into Rouge’s, allowing him to devour it to use Blood Hunger more, or for longer. Rouge’s weapon is a shortsword/large dagger called The Happy Rogue, which can expand out into a lightweight hand scythe, or can be split into a pair of thin daggers, which can still then be expanded into a hand scythe/handaxe combo. As well as their obvious offensive capabilities, Rouge often uses The Happy Rogue for climbing, liking to take advantage of terrain for stealth as well as combat. Rouge is a prankster on the surface, but underneath he has quite an aggressive side, and has a penchant for violence. He and Lime were childhood classmates, and learned and trained together long before Team SLVR was formed, and while he doesn’t showoff his fighting skills nearly as much as she does, they’re equally matched when it comes to combat.

As individuals they all possess powerful semblances, versatile weapons and impressive fighting capabilities; together they are a formidable team, they work well together, and close ranks around their personal weaknesses. But they all have weaknesses that the rest of the team can’t cover for; Lime can’t use her semblance while near the others, or she risks petrifying their Dust, likewise Sand’s Semblance risks Poisoning the others, Violet’s semblance has a short shelf life in combat and if she drops at the wrong time she becomes a big liability, and while Rouge’s has the same problem, he can also take power from the others to extend it, heightening both the risk and the reward. Their strength as a team comes from knowing each others limits, weaknesses, and boundaries, and trying their best to work within and around them.